


At a Certain Point

by hhavenh



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Hemorrhage, Injury, M/M, heights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9380585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhavenh/pseuds/hhavenh
Summary: They say good tidings come to those who wait.That’s all well and good, but Oswin isn’t entirely sure what he’s waiting for.





	

 ---

 

  


 

\---

 

“Pressure.”

Slow, but Jaffar’s other hand eventually lifts to cover the just knotted bandage on his arm. The cloth isn’t stained, but that’s only a matter of time. A short matter, since there’s nothing in Oswin’s chambers to make decent stitches of. The bandage isn’t a proper one by far, but a shirt worn nearly to the point of rags. One that probably wouldn’t have survived another wash in one piece anyway.

Oswin pushes off his knee and moves back the three steps required to get Jaffar’s shoulders to go back low. Gets under his skin to be towered over, no matter that Oswin’s never raised a hand to him a day in his life.

It's... grating, to be so constantly considered a threat.

More disappointing, if Oswin feels like indulging honesty. They are not strangers, not anymore.

Neither are they friends, though it's unlikely Jaffar would care to be. What they are - _between the clasp of frigid hands against his nape and the barely felt press of a midnight kiss, before the cresting of a lonely dawn and the memory of curious fingers chasing starlight across his skin_ \- is nothing Oswin is quite sure how to name.

But even nameless, that doesn't make it nothing.

To himself, at least, but maybe that's where he's gotten it wrong. Maybe therein lies the truth of his irritation.

Oswin clears his throat and wets a rag in the basin against the wall. Blood makes his hands tacky, and the feel will oftentimes turn his stomach. “You’ll need that tended better than what I can manage.”

Jaffar doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t speak. The latter isn’t so rare.

The rest is putting Oswin on edge.

Isn’t natural to see Jaffar’s chin tucked down towards his chest, or for him to sit as he is; one leg folded under him while the other hangs off the edge of the mattress. He’s slouched against the headboard, propped on his shoulder and an old pillow. Like he can’t hold himself up, or is too past the point of care to bother trying.

One's about as likely as the other, and that's a separate issue all together.

"Sit tight," Oswin says, a sigh caught in his throat that he's nearly cross enough to let loose. He doesn't - _he’ll be alone then, all by himself and wondering and wishing he wasn’t in the lonely space between his breaths_ \- but still exits his chambers with far less silence than Jaffar used to enter.

\---

Isn’t Serra that he seeks out, even though she'd likely still be in the sanatorium this late in the evening. There's no doubt that she'd be up to the task, but she'd also be hard pressed to keep the situation under wraps. Necessary, when Oswin has no idea how to explain this arrangement to himself, let alone to his late lord's brother.

It’s a concern Hector doesn’t need, a worry that isn’t one.

So to save his betters - _or maybe more himself_ \- from a conversation Oswin has no idea how to have, it's Rothilde that accompanies him back to his chambers. She uses a cane and needs to take his arm, but she’s never been one for gossip. The time it takes to get her up the stairs is worth that discretion.  She waits when Oswin asks her to, and doesn't comment when he knocks on his own door, "It's me."

He doesn't really expect Jaffar to stay still, or to even still be on the bed when he enters, but life doesn't amount to much unless one is willing to spend a little hope.

Oswin enters and Rothilde follows slowly at his heels. Turns out she didn’t need to.

The bed is empty. So is the bath closet when Oswin checks, just like the shadows to the far left of the hearth, and the top of the wardrobe, and all of Jaffar’s usual haunts. The single-paned window in the eastern wall is open. It lets in an evening breeze that billows the drapes to either side and makes the embers in the hearth glow orange and angry.

Oswin stops short of slamming the window shut when Rothilde speaks up from the doorway, "Am I no longer required?"

"You are not, " he says, more terse than is often his nature. To recognize that in himself is... vexing. As vexing, strangely enough, as the absence of an assassin in his chambers. "My apologies for the trouble."

It isn't that Oswin is disappointed - _he is, he always is, but he can bury it, just like he buries everything else_ \- but more that he is in the dark. More that he has been put in the dark, that he allowed it to happen.

That he allowed it to happen again.

Rothilde turns back towards the hall, and Oswin can’t convince himself to be enough of an ingrate to let her go unassisted.

She doesn’t take his arm when he offers, but gestures away with her wrinkled hand, “The window, general. Be a fool thing to let in a draft.”

Rare, are the occasions when Oswin can feel his tongue grow an edge. It's as if her words are a stone upon which his own sharpen. Something callous and unmeant claws up his throat and snarls against the back of his teeth. He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t. He knows that Rothilde is old, that she is surly and blunt, that she becomes more haggish by the year as her fingernails grow curled and her hair thins. To snap, to let the vast frustration bathing Oswin’s chest burst from his white-pressed lips will bring only scant satisfaction, if satisfaction it can even be named.

She isn’t worth this petty aggravation, all for a…

All for an open window.

A window that Jaffar _never_ leaves open.

Oswin darts back to the east wall in the space of a single breath and sees what anger blinded him to before. There's a bloody thumb print smeared on the outer edge of the window frame, that and a haze of the same immediately below, as if some injured fool there took hold to heft himself up.

The sight of blood unexpected is enough to make his own race, to make his skin prickle in a dreaded certainty.

Oswin leans out over the sill with white knuckles, his throat tight, almost _shut_. "Jaffar!" he barks, holding himself out as far as he can, until the toe of his boots are the only point of contact he has with the floor. “ _Jaffar_!” He tries not to - _as a shattered skull and white-rolled eyes drown his thoughts, as a broken spine and bloodless lips flash so golden and sure at the corners of his eyes-_ but immediately he looks to the ground, to the brown-green grass and the square stoned path that the patrols walk.

Nothing.

There is no body. No stain of blood. Neither on the grass or on the stones, where Jaffar would have been dragged by a startled sentry had he been found before Oswin returned.

There-, gods, there’s _nothing_ , nothing but-.

Nothing but Jaffar, a story below, clinging to a balistraria with one hand.

The bloodied one might be tucked against his chest, or maybe hanging limply at his side. Oswin can’t see, he can’t tell, he can’t feel his feet or his hands, or _anything_  past the throbbing fear that pinches the back of his neck. "Jaffar," Oswin calls again, harsh enough to make his throat raw. “Can you climb?”

It isn’t a surprise when Jaffar doesn’t look up.

What’s less of a surprise, what makes bile coat Oswin’s tongue as his gut churns cold and sour, is that Jaffar doesn’t even try.

He just turns his face to the stone as his cape twists like a lonely kite in the wind.

It almost looks like he’d rather fall.

Oswin moves before reason can talk him down. Rothilde makes some sound, but, "A moment," is all he has the patience to say. One leg over the sill and working on the next, he isn’t of the mind to be cautioned, to be informed of his own recklessness.

He doesn’t remember the first meter. Or the second. The wind whips at his face and twists in-between Oswin’s stomach and the stone wall that doesn’t have half as many spots to grip as he’d honestly expected. The bottom of his boot slides off the upper ledge of the window below three times before Oswin gets some friction, and his fingers already ache from holding himself steady, from lowering himself bit by terrifying bit. He’s too old for this. Too old, too sane, too everything that just can’t _matter_ right now when he can hear the way the wind is snapping Jaffar’s cape around like a banner in a storm.

When he looks down - _breath still tight enough to choke and his eyes made wide by a nervous tension that just won’t quit_ \- Jaffar is looking back. He makes a noise in his throat that Oswin’s never heard, a noise Oswin never wants to hear again.

“What,” he barks, throat still raw enough to make his voice harsh, unmeant or not, “Want me to go back?”

Jaffar is again silent, but the stark misery in his eyes says more than words ever could.

"Your hand," Oswin demands, reaching down with his own. They’re close enough, but only if Jaffar actually _tries_. "You come to me, or I will come to you. The choice is yours."

From the look Jaffar gives him it isn’t a choice at all.

He reaches. He closes sun-baked fingers around Oswin’s ankle and pulls himself up enough to get his other hand in Oswin’s grasp. It’s the bloodied one, but Oswin doesn’t have time to care. He just takes Jaffar by the wrist and hoists him bodily up, until he’s between Oswin and the stone and panting like he’s just won a race.

They are never this close - _not unless it is to be ever closer, to come together and apart in the heat of sliding skin and satisfied desire_ \- but there isn't a moment to relish the novelty. Oswin ducks his head until Jaffar’s bloodied arm is around his neck and starts to move back up the wall. His fingers can’t take much more, and his back feels like there’s a chain affixed to his shoulder and spine, one with hooks at either end that pull his skin that much more apart every time he has to move his arm. It’s an old ache, one that makes him groan every winter morning.

He's never felt it like this. Never felt the stark terror of wondering if it will end him, if a sudden spasm of his shoulder will make him jerk back and fall in place of the fool that wanted to be a bloody smear on the stones below.

Maybe a fitting end, when Oswin's never done something as asinine as follow as assassin out his own window.

"Go," he grits, still hoarse and so far from kind. He jerks his knee up to get Jaffar’s attention, to nudge him that much closer to the waiting ledge above. All he has to do is push up on Oswin’s bent legs and hook his arm over the sill. All he has to do is _try_.

But Jaffar doesn’t.

He just pants raggedly against Oswin’s hair and starts to shiver.

There isn't time to do this nicely, so Oswin gets a hand fisted in the fabric of Jaffar’s shoulder and just _shoves_ him up the rough stone of the wall, as far as he can possibly reach. His arm shakes and his shoulder is as taut as a drawn bow. He hurts, he'll hurt tomorrow and every day after, but there's just nothing else he can do. "Go!"  Oswin barks, a _furious_ sound that even the bellowing wind can't steal. "Go now!"

Jaffar shudders, but at least he tries.

His try is not enough.

His fingers reach the sill, but that's all. His legs tremble, they _buckle,_ and Oswin has to lurch up and catch him against the stones, even as his burning fingers scramble for purchase.

But now they're closer, and that's all that actually matters.

When Oswin shoves Jaffar up this time - _he's going to break, to snap apart, his back is screaming and Oswin's sure his heart will burst if it beats any faster_ \- it's far closer to the sill. He can see his ceiling, and the dusty cobwebs that the chamberlains never clean. He can see Rothilde's wrinkled face. He can feel Jaffar jerk when she reaches for his hand.

They almost fall.

"Back!" The bellow flays Oswin’s throat and rings in his ears. Rothilde disappears from sight and Jaffar makes a horrid noise. He's uncertain, he must be scared, he's lost _so_ _much_ _blood,_ but there isn't time to be gentle, or even to be gracious. Oswin isn't sure he could be either, not when his heart is lodged in his throat and his bare palms are growing slick in nerves that just refuse to abate.

Relief barely cools him when they are finally past the sill.

Jaffar can't keep his feet, or hold himself up. His body trembles. His skin shines. The bandage is damp and dripping, soaked through enough that Oswin could ring Jaffar's blood into a goblet and toast his health.

Might be amusing, if Oswin had ever much cared for irony.

"Steady," he tries, dropping to the floor to pull Jaffar back against his body. Oswin still hasn't caught his breath yet, and his back will ache until the sun goes down, but there’s no time - _as there never is_ \- to tend himself. “Just breathe.” About all that Jaffar’s capable of with the way he is, but even that’s a struggle. His chest moves shallow, and every thready breath rasps past his parted lips. He's so far from steady, from the apathy that often makes him more stone than man.

Jaffar's never been so human as this.

Bloodied and weak, gasping for each breath like a trout tossed to shore. A stone cannot tremble the way he does. A stone cannot fist a white-knuckled hand desperately in Oswin’s sleeve.

"Easy now," Oswin breathes, even if he knows this is anything but. He's been here too many times to recall. His hands have chilled as prickling uncertainty invaded his arms and legs, his chest has moved swift and shallow as his heart screamed death in his ear. Sight gone spotted and dim. Limbs made weak and shaky. This bloody terror is one familiar to any soldier Oswin's age.

"Steady," he says again, but maybe more for himself. His fingers are sore enough to shake as he loosens the soaked bandage and forces it down to coil around Jaffar's wrist. He sweeps Jaffar's cowl away as Rothilde hobbles near. The fabric comes away damp.

Sweat glistens on Jaffar's temples and makes his scarlet hair stand up in dark spikes. He's filthy beneath, his throat and collarbone grimed and pale from too long spent without sun. He's nearly blue in hue, like every plane of his flesh is just one unending bruise.

Oswin's stomach turns. He's sick, or maybe just sad. It's always been hard for him to tell one from the other.

Rothilde's shadow is his only distraction. She stands to the left of their legs and bends over with a stretched hand.

Jaffar is still conscious enough to shy away. There’s a sound caught in his throat, a rasp of thready breath and mangled aggression. Like a rabid dog too weak to snap its foaming jaws.

"None of that," Oswin murmurs, but he's tired and the words come out too weak.

Rothilde doesn't try to touch again.

A quiet mutter, and the crystal imbedded in the handle of her cane flashes dully, a meager glow characteristic of a stave on its last legs. The light reflects off Jaffar’s shining brow and his bloodshot eyes. The skin around them is discolored, maybe tender. Under the stave’s glow he looks too pale. Gaunt. Even starved.

He looks like a corpse.

Oswin has to close his eyes - _though this is nothing he can unsee_ \- and opens them again with his gaze already low, to the gaping wound that gleams red and blue under the crystal's light. The parted skin edges together under his watch. Slow. Plodding. The gleaming split gives reluctant way to flesh made angry and red, all the way until the halves merge beneath a scab the color of old rust.

The light fades and Oswin feels his lips thin, "Is that all?"

"It is enough." Rothilde's cane scrapes against the floor when she turns away. "Water, meat, rest. Nothing more."

It’s another marker of her age, of her slow deterioration into a waspish crone, that she honestly expects that Oswin would have anything more on his mind.

He doesn’t say that - _won’t, when insults are a poor incentive for discretion_ \- but neither does he help her from his chambers. Oswin could name a dozen excuses, most petty, but the true one has hair the color of spring poppies and rests against his chest in exhausted slumber.

Oswin sighs when the door shuts- _as there's no one awake to hear_ \- and lets his head go limp against the wall. The stone is cold. Hard. A draft races past the sill and chills the sweat tucked against his hair line. He aches, all over. His fingers. His back. Even his feet when he toes off one boot and then the other.

Even jostled, Jaffar doesn’t wake.

But he breathes. No longer does he bleed.

That has to be enough.

Or it will be, once Oswin finds the strength to lift them both from the floor. Once he peels sweat and blood dampened clothing from their bodies and washes the red remnant of the same from Jaffar’s flesh.

Oswin's lips stretch and he almost laughs.

Tired as he is, and he can’t help but make himself more tasks. Just as he can't help but wonder at himself, or at the limp man in his arms.

What are they, that Jaffar came to him only to run away?

What are they, that Oswin has so often craved the company of a man with few smiles and fewer words? A man that sometimes isn't a man at all, that would rather chance death than let a stranger see his wounds. A man that won't touch until he's reminded that he can, that will kiss Oswin breathless and disappear before the rise of the sun.

What are they?

What can they be?

More to the point, what does Oswin even want them to be?

\---

The hours are long before Jaffar opens his bruised eyes.

Ostia is quiet. The candles have no wick left to burn and day has given over to a cloudless still night. The window is shut, and latched, but both do little to keep away the twilight chill.

When Jaffar wakes it is not alone. It is against Oswin's chest, buffeted from the cold beneath Oswin's sheets, held loosely in Oswin's still aching arms. It is to a quiet whisper of his name, to the slow stroke of a calloused hand down the sharp angle of his jaw.

“Stay a while,” Oswin says, when Jaffar’s weary eyes finally lift enough to meet his own.

Jaffar licks his lips and asks a question that he hasn't in too long to remember, "Why?"

Maybe he doesn't know what they are either.

Maybe it's time that changed.

Oswin takes a breath, and with it a chance, "Because I'd like you to." He tips Jaffar's chin higher and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his bloodless lips. "Really think that ought to be reason enough."


End file.
